Welding on oil pan while on car
Ivan Vegvary
times) problem is a hairline crack in the oil pan immediately adjacent to
the drain plug.
The plug threads into a thickened (re-enforced) area of the pan and
immediately at the edge of this thickened area starts a hairline crack that
radiates outward for about 3/8 th of an inch. It is possible that the
manufacturer welded this thickened area into the pan and the weld junction
is either failing are developing a stress crack.
I propose to clean the area with a wire wheel and then hit it with the wire
feed welder. Ground strap will be within a few inches, however I will
disconnect the battery just in case. Wife will stand by with a huge fire
extinguisher. Car is up on a hoist.
Removing the pan is the other alternative, but lots of exhaust pipe and
cross bracing in the way. Probably about 2 hours work.
All comments, suggestions, warnings appreciated.
Ivan Vegvary
Grant Erwin
My suggestion is simple. Go to the dealer, buy new oil pan & gasket, and
GET BUSY.
Chances are if you weld it, you'll munge the threads and the plug won't
seal. That's my best guess, anyway.
Grant
DanG
want the exercise of dropping the pan. He knew where the pump
was, cut a hole in the pan, removed and replaced pump and pickup,
welded the pan back together. I don't know what he did about
getting the pan gasket too hot.
--
______________________________
Keep the whole world singing . . . .
DanG (remove the sevens)
dgri...@7cox.net
"Ivan Vegvary" <iv...@reelart.us> wrote in message
news:gUdbk.234$9W.132@trndny04...
Maxwell
I have in fact done this repair to a few cars over the years, and done so
two different ways.
My preferred method is to fabricate a doubler that includes a new drain
plug, and bond it over the leaking area leaving a wide margin everywhere
possible to support the bond. Yes, it has to be extremely clean, and grease
free. But it has always served me well.
The second is welding. But the only time I remember welding and oil pan "on"
the vehicle, after just a few seconds of welding, I got an extremely hard
POP from the combustion gasses on the inside. It bloated the metal pan, and
could have been very dangerous. I don't recommend it, and would never try it
again myself.
The third would be removal, and repair or replace as desired.
RoyJ
type of problem where you have sheet metal and cracks but a good weld is
acceptable. Biggest problem is that no matter what you do, the heat from
the weld will liquify the oil and let it drain down into the weld area.
Yields crappy welds, not to mention the fun of hydrocarbons on red hot
metal.
You may get by with the wire feed on the car but a permanent fix
involves pulling the pan. :(
Leo Lichtman
"Maxwell" wrote: (clip) after just a few seconds of welding, I got an
> POP from the combustion gasses on the inside. It bloated the metal pan,
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
I know of a welding shop that welds gas tanks after running the exhaust from
a small engine into the tank for an hour or so. Another idea might be to
shove in several handfulls of dry ice. The CO2 will force virtually all the
air out. CO2 is heavier than air, so if any air remains, it would not be at
the bottom.
Maxwell
"Leo Lichtman" <l.lic...@worldnet.att.net> wrote in message
news:Jqfbk.92987$102....@bgtnsc05-news.ops.worldnet.att.net...
I have heard that, but never had any first had experience with anyone that
actually did. I would be afraid of it. I would hate to find out the hard
way, that it was just a legend. I have welded gas and diesel tanks, but only
after flushing them with water, then filling them completely with water,
leaving a bubble only where I wanted to weld. Even at that, I have had them
huff a bit.
Have you had the opportunity to witness the exhaust purge technique first
hand Leo?
Curt Welch
Hum. Maybe you could just fill it up with Argon (heaver than air) (or
75/25) and get the same effect??? I'd trust a hose from an Argon tank to
correctly remove the O2 from the tank before I'd try a stunt like dry ice
or engine exhaust. Shit, a 2 stroke mixes the combustible fuel with the
incoming air and pumps some of it out the exhaust on every cycle. Fill
your gas tank with the exhaust from a 2 stroke and you would be asking for
trouble when you started to weld. I wouldn't try anything like that
without the correct knowledge of all the chemistry and risks and the
correct tools like maybe an O2 meter at hand to verify what was in the
tank.
Checking a page on the specific gravity of gases, I see some nice gases
like Butane, Propane, ozone and nitrous oxide are all heaver than Argon and
CO2. Yeah, that would be nice. Push out the O2 but leave the tank full of
butane, propane, ozone and nitrous oxide (close cousin to nitro in chemical
make up). I don't know if O2 in those forms can help the butane burn under
heat, but I wouldn't be the one to bet my life it couldn't.
Personally, I wouldn't go anywhere near a welding job and tanks of highly
combustible material. :) I'll let the "real" welders do that crap.
--
Curt Welch http://CurtWelch.Com/
cu...@kcwc.com http://NewsReader.Com/
Leo Lichtman
"Maxwell" wrote: (clip) then filling them completely with water,
> leaving a bubble only where I wanted to weld. Even at that, I have had
> them huff a bit.
I once tried gas welding some cracks around the petcock on the bottom of a
Harley tank. I filled it with water, and propped it up on my bench, bottom
side up. It blew. The gas cap came off, and water shot out the neck,
drenching me and everything around. I figured out afterwards what had
happened: water dripped put the vent hole in the gas cap, so the water
level dropped slowly. Some gasoline floated on top of the water, and then
ignited.
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> Have you had the opportunity to witness the exhaust purge technique first
> hand Leo?
No. I was told by someone who seemed to know what he was talking about.
Still, only hearsay.
Leo Lichtman
"Curt Welch" wrote: (clip) I'd trust a hose from an Argon tank to
> correctly remove the O2 from the tank before I'd try a stunt like dry ice
> or engine exhaust. Shit, a 2 stroke mixes the combustible fuel with the
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
"Stunt?" CO2 gas is what is produced when dry ice sublimates. It is just
as non-combustible as your argon. And I never said anything about using a
2-stroke engine. Did you throw that in just so you could argue?
Ivan Vegvary
"Maxwell" <luv2^fly99@cox.^net> wrote in message
news:AGgbk.12570$rH1....@newsfe20.lga...
service stations out of the ground is to place enough dry ice on the bottom
to displace all the combustibles. Takes several hours for the ice to
release the gasses. Proof is by testing for hydrocarbons at the top
opening. Until tested clear, you are not allowed to put a chain around the
tank or make contact with anything made of steel (spark avoidance). After
tank is cleared you can start dismantling the attached piping and pull the
tank. Have done many, many of these in the past.
Ivan Vegvary
Steven Saunderson
wrote:
> I propose to clean the area with a wire wheel and then hit it with the wire
> feed welder. Ground strap will be within a few inches, however I will
> disconnect the battery just in case. Wife will stand by with a huge fire
> extinguisher. Car is up on a hoist.
This might sound crazy but why not try to soft solder the crack with a
big electric soldering iron ? It should be strong enough to seal the
crack and doesn't involve a temperature that can ignite anything.
I soft solder spouts on tins full of spray paint and have never had a
problem.
--
Steven
Gunner Asch
wrote:
shrug...if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a
nail.......if you have a welder...every problem looks like a welding
job......<G>
Clean the area really really well, and smear on a coating of Devcon
"Liquid Steel", or even JB Weld. Go at least 1" beyond the crack in
all directions. Avoid the plug seal.....
Ive done a number of oil pans with both and they held up fine for
years, though the vote goes to the Devcon.
Clean...clean..acetone on bare metal clean, let cure for 12 hours
before running the engine.
shrug
Gunner
"The American people will never knowingly adopt socialism, but under the
name of liberalism they will adopt every fragment of the socialist program
until one day America will be a socialist nation without ever knowing how it
happened." -- Norman Thomas, American socialist
Kerry
"Curt Welch" <cu...@kcwc.com> wrote in message
news:20080703234157.378$6...@newsreader.com...
hot rodder about "nitrous" and their eyes glaze over as they tell you all
about their set up.
jimbobm...@verizon.net
> On Thu, 03 Jul 2008 20:33:35 -0500, RoyJ <spaml...@microsoft.net>
>
> - Show quoted text -
I would definately try the epoxy too. Another good one is PC-7 but it
takes 24hrs. to harden before you can put it into service.
Private
> combustible material. :) I'll let the "real" welders do that crap.
It only takes a few hours to learn how to light a torch or to strike an arc
and run a bead. It takes the rest of your life to learn WHEN to do these
things.
The road to becoming a 'real' welder is filled with customers who want you
to do a quick and dirty (cheap) repair using dangerous procedures which they
claim some 'good old' welders do all the time. These customers always claim
to be knowledgeable and experienced themselves, but always want you to be
the one to do the job and to accept the risk (and liability) and to do these
dangerous jobs for very little cost.
The OP of this thread seems to be willing to settle for a poor quality weld
(that will be severely contaminated by oil) in order to 'save' a couple of
hours of mechanical work to remove the pan, and clean and weld it properly.
The oil contaminated weld will probably fail and may cause further (possibly
severe) damage. Any 'real' welder that attempted this job will of course be
blamed for any failure or further damage or accident.
He also proposes to do this 'welding work on a closed container that has
held combustible material', in an overhead position, on a hoist, inside a
(probably combustible) building, which probably contains other combustible
products, and without draining and removing the fuel tank from the vehicle.
He is also proposing to expose his probably untrained wife who will probably
not be wearing proper personal protective equipment suitable for fighting
fire in an enclosed space.
One should always think about how their actions will appear in the accident
report and on the evening news.
If the vehicle is not worth a proper repair then any of the sealers or epoxy
products made for sealing gas tanks are a better alternative for 'a quick
and dirty' repair.
Fire or explosion is a serious risk every time we do any welding, and safety
must be the first and most important consideration anytime we undertake any
welding job.
Good luck, YMMV
Tom M
"Private" <ple...@dont.bother> wrote in message
news:g4li7l$l2b$1...@aioe.org...
Fine words of wisdom.
happy 4th!
Tom
Tim Wescott
This would be my preferred method unless I were exceedingly cash poor at
that moment, or it were a vintage car with unobtainable parts.
2nd choice would be to drop the pan, dip it or have it dipped, clean the
hell out of it, then weld it up (and maybe fix the design flaw that led
to the stress crack in the first place).
3rd choice, after reading the responses here, would be to try the
bonding trick per Maxwell. Good epoxy and clean metal can make some
amazing bonds. But I'd always worry about the whole shebang dropping
off on a hot day on the interstate, leaving my fellow travelers amused
and me stranded.
--
Tim Wescott
Wescott Design Services
http://www.wescottdesign.com
Do you need to implement control loops in software?
"Applied Control Theory for Embedded Systems" gives you just what it says.
See details at http://www.wescottdesign.com/actfes/actfes.html
Curt Welch
Yeah, I love to argue. (debate ideas really).
No, the other poster talked about the idea of venting the tank with the
exhaust of a "small engine" (if I remember the wording correctly). I was
thinking and commenting about the potential risks if that "small engine"
was a 2 stroke instead of a 4 stroke. That comment had nothing to do with
your CO2 suggestion.
The problem I would see with using dry ice is not that CO2 is better or
worse than Argon, but that you would have a very hard time knowing how much
C02 you had generated by using "a few handfuls" of dry ice and have a hard
time knowing if the CO2 had evenly displaced all the O2 or if it had just
mixed with the O2 leaving a lot of the O2 in the tank. With a welding tank
of Argon or CO2, you could calculate how much gas you had pushed through
the tank by the flow rates and you could keep it flowing at a low rate to
make it slowly displace the O2 in a "plug flow" type of mix instead of the
case where the two gases would mix and dilute each other and push a lot of
the CO2 out with the O2 leaving a lot of O2 still in the tank.
There was an interesting article in the AWS welding Journal an issue or two
back (May 08 actually) about the problems of purging a welding piece with
inert gas. They had lots of good ideas about the things you have to do to
make sure the inert gas had correctly pushed out all the reactive gases.
They suggested for example to use a dew point meter instead of an oxygen
meter because many o2 meters weren't sensitive enough to detect small
amount of oxygen (they were built for safety checks for humans to breath
not for the small amounts that could mess up a weld - and probably the
small amounts to create an explosion I would guess). There was also the
problem of bubbles of O2 being stuck in high spots to look out for. And
the general issue of plug vs mixing flows that would require you to pump
large amounts of gas through before the O2 level became low enough.
The complexity of doing purging correctly to back your weld with inert gas
made me realize the complexity you can face if trying to remove the O2 to
keep it from exploding as well.
Don Young
Indian (pre 1958) tanks by draining, blowing out with the air blow gun,
clamping a mounting ear in the vice, and sticking the lit torch into the cap
opening. You would get a small explosion but the small tank was plenty
strong enough to withstand it. I have successfully soldered an empty auto
gas tank with a 300W American Beauty iron but have never gotten near one
with a torch. The accepted method of purging them used to be with a steam
cleaner.
Don Young
Rob Fraser
Ivan,
Really, Pull and clean the pan. It's the right thing to do. Oil is going
to be contaminating the weld area without cleaning and prepping it. What
kind of pan is it? Would you want to replace it if you are seeing stress
cracks which indicate a deeper problem or end of life for the pan. I make my
own oil pans for race cars and customize ones for custom jobs. It's just
better to do it once and correctly. You don't want to dump the contents on a
road trip and lose the engine.
Rob
Fraser Competition Engines
Chicago, IL.
Ivan Vegvary
Decided to take off the pan prior to welding.
Crack is near drain hole and includes the re-enforced threaded portion.
Purchased a 14mm 1.5 pitch nut at ACE hardware ($ 1. 48 ouch!) and a 14mm
1.5 bolt ($ 3.85 OUCH OUCH!!!!). Faced off the 'castle-ated' portion of the
nut on the lathe so I would have a large, fat face against the drain plug
gasket.
Threaded the nut onto the bolt and then threaded the bolt into the drain
plug hole with the nut tight up against the drain hole. Drilled the end of
the crack to relieve stress. Brazed the nut onto the oil pan along with
brazing the adjacent crack. Sprayed the area with a rattle can. Looks
great.
Dealer wanted $ 186 for a replacement plan. Wrecking yard wanted $ 105,
including shipping. Loving wife said I should buy the new pan since the
kids (owners of the car) can afford it. I was able to braze it in less time
than it would have taken to drive to the dealer. Not the prettiest braze
job, but, I got enough metal on there so that it will never break or leak at
that location.
Thanks again for encouraging me not to weld 'in-situ'.
Ivan Vegvary
RoyJ
Jon Danniken
> The problem I would see with using dry ice is not that CO2 is better or
> worse than Argon, but that you would have a very hard time knowing how
> much
> C02 you had generated by using "a few handfuls" of dry ice and have a hard
> time knowing if the CO2 had evenly displaced all the O2 or if it had just
> mixed with the O2 leaving a lot of the O2 in the tank.
Actually, no, it is very easy to know how much CO2 you would have, if you
take a few seconds and look at the numbers.
The volume of gas released (at room temp and pressures) from one cubic
centimeter of dry ice is about 0.83 liter (about a fifth of a gallon). If
you assume that a handful of dry ice is about the volume of a golf ball (a
golf ball being about 30 cubic centimeters), and that "a few handfulls" is
three golf ball size chunks of dry ice, then you are looking at the amount
of CO2 liberated being about 74 liters, or about 20 gallons.
As for the mixing of the gasses, dry ice sublimates slowly enough that if
you leave the tank undisturbed with a small orifice for O2 to leave (to
minimize drafts), you can reasonably assume that a sufficient amount of 02
has been displaced.
You can give yourself an additional safety factor if you wish; dry ice is
cheap and readily available enough.
Jon
Leo Lichtman
"Jon Danniken" wrote: The volume of gas released (at room temp and
> centimeter of dry ice is about 0.83 liter (about a fifth of a gallon).
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
Actually, from my drinking experience, I believe a "fifth" equals 750 cc.
As far as displacing ALL the oxygen is concerned--you don't have to. You
need to displace most of it, so the remaining content of the tank is outside
the ignition limits. AMHIKT (Ask me how I know this.) Okay, I'll tell you.
When I ws a grad student at Cal, I worked on a project for the Air Force in
which we studied what happens inside a fuel tank when an ignition source
(such as a tracer bullet) goes into a tank. The object was to fill the
vapor space in aircraft tanks with a non-combustible mix. We used spark
plugs in most of our tests, and actually fired bullets in many of the tests.
Stupendous Man
It shot out a burst of flame catching him square in the face. Not pretty.
What is wrong with soldering using big coppers, heated a few feet away on
the bench? I did this with a cracked fuel tank, although the assistant was
heating the coppers 40 feet away and above floor level due to gas vapor
being what it is.
--
Stupendous Man,
Defender of Freedom, Advocate of Liberty
John Gullotti
Unbeknownst to many, almost all (if not all) of the hardware store fasteners
are leaded steel. Welding to leaded steels is possible, but one never gets
the original base material ductility or strength in welds to leaded steels
and there is the significant potential for undetected hot cracking.
Commercial fasteners are made by folks who are concerned about their tooling
and not whether or not the fasteners will work well in a welded application.
Leaded (free machining) steels are much easier on automated screw machines
and the factories can get many, many more parts per setup than if they use
"regular" steel grades.
J
"Ivan Vegvary" <iv...@reelart.us> wrote in message
news:thack.317$P11.154@trndny06...